Second Guessing
by Sgamer82
Summary: Ai Haibara has made a life changing decision... but was it a good one? (ONE SHOT) Written for Poirot Café Super Short Contest #10: Mistake
**_Detective Conan_**
 ** _Second Guessing_**  
 _By_  
 _Sgamer82_

Was this a mistake?

It was not the first time I've asked myself that question. Nor, I'm sure, would it be the last.

The Organization was, for all intents and purposes, destroyed. In particular, everyone who knew or cared about Sherry was either arrested or dead. That left me free to choose my own fate, and I had chosen to shed my past entirely. Gone were Sherry and Shiho. Going forward it would be Ai who lived on. In too many ways the decision had been clear. Everywhere I had looked there were signs I had only one real choice.

My mother's tapes, the sole memento Elena Miyano had been able to leave a daughter she feared would grow up without her, had been filled with messages to me about mundane worries like what boys I would like, or advice to make the changes of adolescence as painless as possible. Only at the very end did they become more serious in nature. While I would never know what my father wanted for me, it was clear my mother had never imagined me involved with the Organization as I had been.

Onee-chan, too, did her best to keep the Organization from tainting my life as much as she could. She tried to give me a sense of normalcy in that world. She had gone so far as to give her life trying to set me free of it.

For myself, what was there to even go back to? There was no danger from the Organization now, but that same Organization had been all I had ever known until the day I became Ai Haibara. I know that those close to me now would have supported me, but to what end? I didn't know what I wanted I only knew what I didn't want. What I didn't want, most of all, was to feel alone anymore.

The only person who truly cared about Shiho Miyano was dead. Those who cared about me now knew Ai Haibara. Some, like Kudo-kun and Professor Agasa, weren't concerned what size I was or what name I used. Others, like the Detective Boys, knew me as their friend and classmate and would have been heartbroken to lose their peer, even if they now knew I wasn't, not really.

It wasn't as if I couldn't have maintained contact with them as Shiho, but it wouldn't have been the same. Kudo-kun had amply demonstrated that. Even though the kids had been let in on our secret, even as they still called him "Conan-kun", he had become a more direct mentor figure than he had when he was just their classmate. Losing that friendship, I realized, had been another thing I did not want.

Of course, just because the decision was clear cut in many ways didn't mean it came without its negative sides.

I wasn't thrilled about being dependent on others, but like it or not that was part of being a young child. School also promised to become a chore. I've never been as bad as Kudo-kun about it, but it really is hard to take lessons seriously when I can get myself literally any grade I want. Incidentally, I had already decided to keep my grades middling to above average. Another thing I didn't want was to be put into some accelerated genius program. Been there, done that, ran a drug lab at thirteen.

Then there were my new living arrangements. I suppose I only had myself to blame if I was dissatisfied on that score. I had been surprised by the offer from Kudo-kun's parents to join their household. So had Kudo-kun, as a matter of fact. Less surprising was that there had been a catch.

Yukiko-san had told me up front that if I was going to choose a second childhood, then that was exactly what I would get. If I said yes, she and her husband would treat "Ai Kudo" as their second child, as opposed to the adolescent in a child's body Ai Haibara had been. That was probably the reason my new bedroom had been decorated with more frilly lace than even seven year old Shiho Miyano could've tolerated. I suspect Yoshida-san must have been consulted at some point. I certainly wasn't. Yet, despite all the embarrassment and awkwardness this arrangement promised, I decided to accept.

Professor Agasa would gladly have let me stay with him. I knew that. I also knew if I was going to make this decision work in the long term, I had to do everything I could to embrace it now. I love the Professor, and he loves me, but we'd been together too long. We had our routines and if I stayed with him nothing would have changed. For better or worse, I had opted to take Yukiko-san's offer and dive into the deep end of the pool. I did not want to let this Second Chance go to waste.

Was this a mistake? Time would tell, I suppose. By the time it did, I suspect a very different person from the one who asked will ultimately be the one who answers. If that happens, then I can only hope that means I made the best of things.

Now... grabbing a pair of scissors and cutting up as much of that frilly lace as I could reach, _that_ had been a mistake. One that was going to keep me stuck in my new bedroom for the foreseeable future and, knowing my new parents' sense of humor, probably meant I was going to see a lot more pink enter my life.

Well, at least my new life wasn't going to be _too_ dull.


End file.
